And so, the idiocy in the mobile industry continues. Motorola has just upped the ante in this already ridiculous spider web of lawsuits by suing the pants off Apple. Eighteen patents are involved, most of which seem to be actual hardware patents, but that doesn't make some of them any less obvious (apparently, you can patent the location of your antenna). Anywho, like Nokia, Motorola claims that Apple is unwilling to license Motorola's patents, and as such, suing was the only option.

These are old, established, already licensed (to several other companies), patents that Motorola is suing over.

Both Nokia and Motorola are suing Apple over their long established patents which they have licensed to everyone else in the market, and they both long negotiated with Apple, and Apple refused to license what everyone else has had to license.

Knowing this, it's hard to see how Apple will stand a chance.

I don't know, maybe their strategy is to blatantly violate the patents, then in the ensuing lawsuits, try to stretch it out in court for as long as possible (Apple has very deep pockets), until they somehow get the patents invalidated, or just hope that Nokia and Motorola lose the wherewithal to continue.

But of course they could get reamed as well. It's a game of brinkmanship.